


A Different Point of You

by alternatealto



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 09:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8839483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatealto/pseuds/alternatealto
Summary: Wilson tells House something House is not prepared to accept, setting the two of them at odds.





	1. Ending Point

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on my LiveJournal in 2010. Set in an alternate universe that diverges from canon just after Season 2.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING for graphic depiction of child abuse in Chapter 2. Please read with caution.

It was the fourth bar he’d been in that night.  
  
Not that he’d been drinking at all of them – not that he’d been drinking at _any_ of them, up to now.  The first three, he’d stepped into, looked around, and decided they didn’t fit his mood.  This one, though, looked as if it would do.  To call it a seedy dive would be an extravagant compliment:  one of the front windows had been broken and boarded up for months now, from the looks of it; the tables and chairs were a mis-match of kitchen pieces and what looked like refugee booths from a defunct diner; a few ragged and dispirited posters of mid-80s stars and starlets littered the walls.  His feet stuck to the floor as he crossed to the bar, passing the jukebox which bore a sign stating, laconically, “DON’T WORK.”  It was hard to tell if that was a description, or advice.  
  
The bartender, bald on top with a long ponytail in the back, several teeth gone and a grubby shirt touting the _1994 Princeton 5K Run for_ _Fun_ that didn’t quite join up with his jeans over his pot belly, said “What’ll it be?” in a tone that indicated he hoped the answer would be “nothing,” and a hasty exit.    
  
“Dunno yet.  Give me a shot of Jack while I make up my mind.”  
  
The bartender hunted around in a pile of miscellaneous glassware and unearthed something that looked like a shot glass.  “Y’want ice?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“S’good, ’cause we ain’t got none.  Damned freezer went to hell this morning.  I got water, f’ya want.”    
  
“Just the Jack.”  Privately he had his doubts about what was in the bottle.  It was a pleasant surprise to find that it actually was Jack Daniels when the bartender handed over the shot, so he snarled, because a pleasant surprise was definitely not what he was in the mood for.    
  
He hoisted himself onto a bar stool, cursing under his breath as his leg twinged, and let his eyes roam over the rest of the place.  One pool table with the felt worn nearly off in the center, a dartboard, the aforementioned miscellaneous furniture, two or three customers, all alone at separate tables, all with the look of people who drank to destroy as many brain cells as possible. Yeah, the place was perfect.  
  
He took a sip of the whiskey, held it in his mouth for the burn.  
  
Goddamn Wilson, anyway.  He was Jewish; why the hell he’d decided to pick Christmas Fucking Eve for a maudlin, inappropriate, and unwanted declaration of love was beyond House.  House had actually had to smack his hands off, push him away – _then_ he’d had to deal with the hurt and shamed look Wilson had given him, the earnest explanations of why he felt like this, how he'd hoped House – God _damn_ the man.  Just damn him.  A more-or-less functional friendship (all he was capable of), now shot to hell because House-I-want-more.    
  
Well, he wasn’t getting it.  
  
Wilson had been told where he got off, no question.  Told to take his beer and his fucking Christmas present and get his goddamned traitorous ass out the door and never come back.  It had been almost sickening to see that the man was genuinely surprised by this – what the hell did he expect, that House would drag him into the bedroom and start ripping off his clothes?  The thought was . . . it was . . .   
  
Damn him to hell.  
  
The bar was cold -- apparently the heat wasn't working any better than the refrigeration.  He took another sip of the whiskey to warm himself, then drained the rest of the shot and pushed the glass back across the counter, where it was refilled without comment.  He was sitting hunched over it when there was a rustle of clothing next to him, and he glanced over, covertly, to see a woman at the next stool.  Late 30s, brunette, olive skin, cheeks reddened a bit from the cold outside; wearing jeans, a long-sleeved sweatshirt and a down vest.  She smiled easily at the bartender and asked for a beer; House was inexplicably pleased to see that she didn’t get any better service than he had himself, in spite of the smile.  
  
He went back to staring into his drink, trying to convey that he hadn’t come here for conversation, then finding himself irritated when she simply took a long drink of the cheap beer without a word.  He stared across the room at a dusty poster of Christina Applegate, turning the shot glass around and around in front of him.  He was going to be here all night, after all; there was no point in getting too smashed too quickly.  There was no way he was going home until morning; if he went home tonight he’d fall asleep, and if he did that he’d probably dream of that . . . _look_ in Wilson’s eyes.  
  
Damn Wilson.  
  
“You’re making a bad mistake, you know.”  Her voice was rather deep, pleasant to listen to without being sultry.    
  
“You’re making the same one yourself,” he retorted.   
  
“Oh, I didn’t mean the place you chose to drink in,” she said, “although it might not have been your best choice.  But there were kinder ways of turning him down, don’t you think?”  
  
House looked across the bar, where the bartender was picking at his remaining teeth and watching some obscure soccer match on a small television that sat at the end of the bar, facing in.  “He hasn’t asked me for anything.  Just poured me a shot and told me there was no ice.”  
  
“I’m not talking about the bartender.  I’m saying you were rather needlessly cruel to a good friend not so long ago.”  
  
He stared into his glass.  _Great.  Auditory and visual hallucinations.  What’s in this stuff besides whiskey?  
_  
“Nothing.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“There’s nothing but whiskey in the glass, Dr. House.”  
  
“How do you know who I am?  I don’t think we’ve met.”  
  
“I know a great deal about you.  More than you do, in fact.  You are, in a way, my job.”  
  
He felt a sudden surge of relief.  He was dreaming, then.  Dreaming – and if that was the case, then none of this was happening, and none of it _had_ happened.  He wasn’t in a shithole of a bar on Christmas Eve, drinking because his best friend had . . . if he was dreaming, then Wilson _hadn’t_.    
  
A dream. Yes, he definitely felt relieved.  It lasted all the way until she spoke again.  
  
“You’re not dreaming, and yes, he did.  It’s why he was so late, you know.  He walked around the block five times in the cold before he made up his mind to try.”  
  
He pushed the shot glass away from him and turned to stare at her.  “How do you know about that?  How do you know about _any_ of it?”  
  
“I told you.  You’re my job.”  
  
“Your _job?_   And so what kind of . . .” he let his gaze wander over her rudely, “ . . . _profession_ do you follow, then?”  
  
She looked at him solemnly out of brown eyes that were so similar to another pair that his own dropped before them.  “I think you’d call me a guardian angel.  _Your_ guardian angel.”  
  
Oh, it was _definitely_ the whiskey.  He was turning into a lightweight, if one shot of Jack was affecting him like this. “Yes, because this is _exactly_ the sort of place where guardian angels hang out,” he assured her.  
  
“Actually, you’re more likely to need one in a place like this than in other places I could mention,” she responded, with a sudden smile.  
  
She had him there. “Well, then.  If you’re my guardian angel,  I’d like to tell you you’re doing one hell of a lousy job.”  
  
She cocked her head a little.  “The only reason you can say that is because you don’t know what my job actually is.  Do you?”  
  
He shrugged.  “Should be obvious from the title.  You’re supposed to guard me.”  
  
“From?”  
  
“From . . . I don’t know.  Making mistakes.  Screwing up my life, screwing up other people’s lives.  Winding up in a place like this on Christmas Eve without a friend in the world.”  
  
“Your own choices and reactions are what determine what happens to you.  Guarding you from all that would be to guard you _from_ your life.  I’m not supposed to prevent you from living your life in the way that works for you.”  
  
“How about when it doesn’t?”  _And why am I encouraging her like this?_  
  
“Even then.”  
  
“So, then, what precisely _is_ your job, since you’re not exactly guarding me from much of anything?”  
  
“To answer that, I’ll have to tell you a few other things first.”  
  
“Why not.  I’ve got all night, and fairy stories are better when I’m drunk, anyway.”  
  
“You’re not drunk,” she pointed out.  
  
“Not yet.”  
  
“Very well, then.   Once upon a time . . .”  
  
He rolled his eyes.  “Oh, for crying out loud.”  
  
“You don’t like the way the story starts?  Now that I think about it, it’s all wrong anyway, since there _wasn’t_ time.  Let me see . . .   
  
“There was non-existence.   Then there was existence, and as the one became the other, Time began, and so did everything else.  _Being_ happened, and there was a way it was supposed to go on, but Time – Time tried to start _and_ to stay still, both at once, and it . . . shattered.  It broke, so that Being had to break and shatter along with it, because Being needs Time, and Time is pointless without Being.    
  
“When they shattered that way, neither of them could happen the way they were supposed to, and instead of one vast and perfect Purpose, there were an infinity of broken and imperfect ones.”  
  
“When you tell a story you go straight for the big themes.”  
  
“We – that is, I and the others like me – we happened in the instant before the break took place.  And we’ve worked ever since to try and put things back the way they were supposed to be at the start.”  
  
“So . . . guardian angels run around gathering up pieces of broken . . . reality?  No wonder you’re so interested in picking up strangers in bars.”  
  
That got him a tolerant smile.  “Each of the pieces is its own universe, its own existence, that goes on being, with its own form of time.  Each of them is like and unlike all the others.  Our job is to make them more like each other, until they’re all the same again, and things can go on the way they were meant to.  This is a very simplified explanation; but I’m afraid I can’t do better.”  
  
“Makes me miss my Philosophy 101 professor.  She’d’ve loved to meet you.  But if your job is to look out for the really big picture, what are you doing here?”  
  
“We don’t come one to a universe; there are more of us than you can conceive of.  We’re literally everywhere.”  
  
“And  you’re . . . assigned to me.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I don’t think I like the sound of that.  I mean . . .”  
  
“You mean you think I’m pulling your strings from behind the scenes?  No, that’s not the way it works.  You get to be yourself, always.  My job is to see that you _are_ yourself, in fact.”  
  
“There are times when I’m being myself that I’d rather not have anyone else see.”  
  
“Then you’re fine, because I’m not an ‘anyone’.  I’m not really a person; I’m more of a force.  An influence.”  
  
“An influence on me to do what?”  
  
“To be you.  Specifically, to be the truest version of yourself that you can be.”  
  
“So I’ll be more like the other Greg Houses in all the other universes.”  
  
“Yes, in a way.”  
  
“So, do you have, I don’t know, committee meetings or something to keep track of what all the Greg Houses are up to?”  _This is getting more bizarre by the minute; there must have been something in that glass besides whiskey._  
  
“That’s not necessary.  There’s only me.”  
  
“I thought you said . . .”  
  
“I’m _your_ guardian.  You are in all those universes, so therefore I have to be, too.  But I came before the break, so there’s only one of me.”  
  
He closed his eyes.  “I’m getting a headache, here.”  
  
“I told you it wasn’t simple.”  
  
“Let’s cut to the chase.  Why are you talking to me, here and now, if you’re only supposed to be performing some kind of mystic “influence” on me?  Sitting in a gritty dive of a bar isn’t exactly mystical.”  
  
“Sometimes only direct methods work.”  
  
“And so . . .”  
  
“And so, I’ve done what I came for.”  
  
“Wait – when?  Did I miss something?”  
  
“Yeah.  Yer gonna miss yer last chance at a drink if you keep sittin’ there, man.  My license don’t only go ’til 2 a.m.”  
  
He jerked his head around to look at the bartender.  “I’m fine,” he said, lifting the still-full shot glass to prove it.  
  
“Sure y’are.  A guy that’s fine always sits for an hour starin’ at his whiskey an’ mumblin’ to himself.  Yer just as fine as the rest of ’em, anyway.  But I gotta close, okay?”  
  
He looked around.  There was no sign of the woman who had been sitting next to him; not even an empty beer bottle.  
  
He was so rattled, the full shot glass was still sitting on the bar when he walked out.  
  
  
 * * * * * * *   
  
He drove home with extreme care; it was Christmas Eve after all – well, Christmas Day, now – and the other bars with early closing hours would be sending drunks out onto the roads.    
  
He’d hoped to be one of them.  
  
In fact, he remembered thinking (while he was looking for a place to _become_ one of them) that getting drunk and having an accident on the way home would solve his problem.  Except for involving other people – and, of course, the fact that not all drunken accidents are fatal, and he really didn’t need to be even more crippled than he was.    
_  
Breaking your head isn’t any cure for a broken . . ._  
  
He yanked his thoughts back into line as he parked in the handicapped space in front of his apartment.  Whatever was broken, it wasn’t _that_.  Wilson was an idiot, a stupid idiot who’d destroyed the one real friendship House had ever managed to sustain with anyone, but House wasn’t as angry about it now as he had been earlier in the evening. Just tired, and . . .   
  
_Lonely,_ part of him whispered.  
  
Which was nonsense.  People who needed people got lonely; he wasn’t that kind of person.  He needed no one, particularly not a brown-eyed oncologist with a disarming smile and an artless way of getting right under your skin and making it seem as if he’d always been there.    
  
Because, if you needed someone like that, the pain when you had to rip him out again might be more than you’d survive.   So it was a good thing he didn’t need anyone that way.  
  
He went into his bedroom and took three Vicodin tablets, washing them down with water from the bottle by the bedside.  After thinking for a moment, he went into the bathroom, got a sleeping pill from the medicine cabinet, and added that to the mix.  Somehow, he didn’t want any more whiskey.  He changed into his sleepwear and tried to settle down for what remained of the night.    
  
If he dreamed of Wilson, or anyone else, he’d forgotten it all when he woke up.  
  
Christmas Day was so fucking boring he thought he’d lose his mind.  By the early afternoon he was driving around randomly, simply because the four walls of his apartment were closing in on him and there was nothing there he wanted to do.  Except drink.  
  
And after last night . . .     
  
Plus, the longer he was there, the more nervous he got that Wilson might decide to come by and have a conversation, try to put things right.  As the early dusk came, he drove past the banal light displays trying not to imagine how that might have gone.  Now that he thought about it, though, there were a few things he hadn’t said to Wilson the other night that he’d like to get in.  Just to be sure his point was made; to be sure Wilson understood that when House put up “No Trespassing” signs he damned well meant them.    
  
If Wilson would stay on his own side of the signs, maybe they could go back to the way things had been.  Maybe.    
  
The third time his randomly chosen route took him past Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, he sighed, pulled in, and parked the car.  There might at least be something to do here.  He limped in, ignoring the astonished looks of the nurses at Admitting, and pushed the elevator button for his office floor.    
  
Diagnostics was dark and quiet; their last case had been dealt with two days before and nothing new had arrived since then.  But there was a light in Wilson’s office.  House, on the verge of opening his own office door, swore silently to himself as he remembered that Wilson, being Jewish, had volunteered to let someone else have their holiday off.  Instead of opening his own door, House backtracked to the elevator and returned to the Clinic, where he sighed, signed himself in, and proceeded to deal with indigestion, tripping injuries, hangovers, food poisoning, and the inevitable colds and flu.  It was at least marginally more interesting than staying home, and he might as well burn off the clinic hours while he had some motivation.  Mindful that the nurses probably knew Wilson was around, he made a point of not antagonizing anyone, difficult as that was when treating the third screaming toddler in a row for an ear infection.  The last thing he wanted was someone calling Wilson to deal with some patient he’d managed to piss off.  
  
Four or five hours later, he signed himself out again.  The most interesting thing all afternoon had been the idiot who’d decided to celebrate every Christmas kiss by eating one of the berries from the decorative mistletoe.  Unfortunately for him, he’d been popular, and when the berries ran out he’d started eating the leaves.  Between the phoratoxin naturally present in the plant, the preservatives the mistletoe had been treated with, and the alcohol the moron had used to wash it all down, the results had been rather spectacularly messy, and House could only curse at the man under his breath for coming to the clinic instead of going to Emergency where he belonged.  He’d arranged for Mr. Kissy-Face’s admission for IV fluids, activated charcoal, and necessary monitoring, and thought for a moment about the way Wilson would laugh when House told him about it – until he realized he wasn’t likely to do that.  
  
 _Damn_ Wilson.  
  
  
* * * * *  
  
  
He came in late (as usual) one day two weeks later; not so much from habit as from having spent a good bit of the night sitting up and swearing at his leg.  The pain had been a lot worse lately.  He had a certain amount of Vicodin stashed away, but it had occurred to him that since he and Wilson weren’t on speaking terms any more he’d have to find someone else to write prescriptions for him.  In order to put that off as long as possible, he was trying to take fewer Vicodin, adding extra-strength ibuprofen instead.  The combination wasn’t as effective as he’d hoped.  
  
There had been one phone call from Wilson after the Christmas Eve fiasco, a message pleading for House to call him back.  House had erased it, only to have Wilson approach him in the parking garage after work a few days later.  He had dealt with this loudly and succinctly, and since then Wilson had been going out of his way to avoid him, spending far more of his time in the Oncology section than usual and arranging to meet with his outpatients there instead of in his office.  House had retaliated by calling Griffiths instead of Wilson for a consult when it looked as if the condition of Diagnostics’ most recent patient might be due to a malignant paraganglioma.  If his team had found this odd, two out of three of them had the good sense to say nothing about it.  The exception, of course, was Cameron, who had actually been stupid enough to volunteer to act as a go-between “if something’s wrong between you and Dr. Wilson.”  
  
She wouldn’t be trying _that_ again any time soon.  
  
Waiting for the elevator, he leaned on his cane a bit more heavily than usual, the strap of the backpack digging into his left shoulder as he watched the floor indicator slowly move down.  5 – 4 – 3 – a few more seconds and he’d be –   
  
“Dr. _House!_ ”  
  
Cuddy.  Dammit.  He closed his eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. “If it’s about my clinic hours, I did _three_ this week,” he said loudly, not turning to look at her.  
  
“It’s not.  But since you brought it up, I’ll take the opportunity to remind you that I expect _you_ to work the clinic, not just send your fellows.  And I also expect you to do the work in a civil and professional fashion.”  
  
“But Mo - om . . .  ”  Wasn’t the damned elevator ever going to get here?  
  
It arrived with a “ _bing!_ ” and a flourish of opening doors.  It was empty; he dodged in quickly.    
  
Not quickly enough.  Cuddy stepped in right after him, pulling out the “hold” button as soon as the doors were shut. “It wasn’t your clinic hours I wanted to talk to you about, House.  What’s going on with you and Dr. Wilson?”  
  
House rolled his eyes.  “Nothing,” he said, flatly.  
  
“Nothing?  Nothing whatsoever? Everything’s normal?”  At his shrug, she went on, “Then I guess you won’t be surprised to hear that he was in my office this morning to tell me he’s planning to accept a position at Johns Hopkins.”  
  
For a second he thought there must have been some kind of brownout:  everything went dim, then suddenly much too bright.  Wilson was . . . _leaving_?  Pulling himself together, he looked at the Dean of Medicine and gave a small, quick nod, keeping his face as expressionless as possible.  
  
“Well – ?” she said, clearly expecting more.  
  
“Well, _what_ _?_ ”  
  
“You didn’t think this was important enough to _tell_ me about it?  You didn’t think I might like to _know_ my Head of Oncology has decided he’s done all he can do here, and feels it’s time to move on?  Dammit, House . . !”  
  
He glanced at her, then looked away, his posture stiff.  “I thought it would be – ”  
  
“I don’t care _what_ you thought.  I want you to go to him and talk him out of this.  I can’t afford to lose him, House, and you know it.  For that matter, _you_ can’t afford to lose him.”  
  
He winced, but shifted his position to look at her directly.  “No.”  
  
“No?  You won’t talk to him?  House, why the hell not?”  
  
“Wilson and I . . . aren’t talking any more.”  There.  He’d said it.  It must be real, now.  
  
There was a long pause, and then her expression suddenly changed.  “Oh.  _Oh._   Oh, god, House,  I’m so sorry.  I should have known you would already have tried.  I . . . I apologize.  I was just . . . it was such a shock, and I thought if anyone could get through to him . . .”  
  
“If anyone can, it’s not me.  Not anymore.”  He reached past her to push the “hold” button back in, but she yanked it out again.  
  
“House.  I don’t want to pry, but I need to know.  Did he say anything, give you _any_ reason why he’s leaving?  All I could get out of him was that he felt it was time to move on, and this was a good opportunity for him.  Can you think of anything at all I could offer him?  Any reason he might be persuaded to stay?”  
  
“If he has other reasons, he hasn’t told me what they are.  You weren’t the only one surprised by this.”  He pushed in the “hold” button and pressed the number for his floor.  
  
“Oh, god,” she said again as the elevator began to move up.  “God, this must be horrible for you.  And now he’s stopped talking to you on top of it.  House, I’m just so sorry.”  
  
“Yeah,” House said, as the elevator stopped and the doors opened.  “But I’m trying to look on the bright side. Once he’s out of here, you can put in that game room I keep requesting.  Right next door, much easier on the leg.”  
  
He limped down the corridor to his office, leaving a silent Cuddy behind.  
  



	2. Set Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It looks simple on the surface: House rejected him, and so Wilson is leaving. Or is that the real reason?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING for graphic description of (past) physical and psychological child abuse in this chapter. Please read with caution.

  
_He’s leaving.  
  
He’s leaving.  Wilson’s fucking leaving.  _  
  
He hadn’t thought Wilson would do that, though now that he considered, he really ought to have expected it.  It was the same pattern Wilson always clung to:  when a relationship went sour, he ran away.  His first marriage failed, he ran to New Jersey.  Bonnie dumped him, he moved out.  Julie cheated on him, he moved in with House temporarily, then lived in a hotel for months on end.  He always gave up; it seemed that in the end he just didn’t care enough about his marriages to try to fight for them.   Obviously, friendships worked the same way. It was just like him to decide to go to Baltimore now.     
  
Damn him.  
  
Although as far as House was concerned, of course, it didn’t matter.  If he and Wilson were on bad terms now, with Wilson right next door, they could certainly stay on bad terms just as well with Wilson in Baltimore.  And once the man was well and truly gone, House wouldn’t have to keep feeling that jolt in his solar plexus every time his former friend walked past his office door without entering.    
  
Overall, it was probably for the best.  
  
There was nothing he could do about it, anyway.  
  
Years of practice had made him adept at clambering over the wall that separated their balconies, and the January thaw meant snow and ice weren’t a problem.  The fact that the balcony door was technically locked might have been a problem, if he hadn’t swiped a key years before, and the same was true for Wilson’s desk.  Although it turned out that what he was seeking wasn’t locked away – in fact, it was right there, on a desktop that was otherwise surprisingly clear of paperwork of any kind.  But then, Wilson wasn’t in his office as much as usual lately.  Just now, like a good doctor, he was off doing rounds: House had the room to himself.   He settled into Wilson’s desk chair to evaluate his find.  
  
It was simple enough: a letter from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, offering Wilson the position of Director for the Pediatric Oncology Outpatient Clinic.  Or, rather, formalizing an offer that had clearly already been made over the telephone.  His eyes skimmed quickly over details he wasn’t really interested in, then suddenly jerked back to the date at the top of the page:  December 10th.   
_  
December 10th._     
  
Wilson had been thinking about this, _planning_ this, for months, without telling House – or, admittedly, anyone else.  Planning to leave.  _Wanting_ to leave.   To leave PPTH, to leave Princeton . . .  to leave House.  Running away – 150 miles away, not as far as the cross-country jaunt that had brought him to Princeton to begin with, but far enough.  Far enough to make it plain that whatever was driving him to run was serious and, in Wilson’s mind at least, hopeless.  
  
House put the letter down staring into space as his thoughts sorted themselves into facts, speculations, and wild guesses.  The date on the letter meant that Wilson had been in touch with Johns Hopkins since at least last fall, so . . .  Bingo.  The oncology conference in Baltimore, back in early October.  House hadn’t been there, of course; but Wilson had, and he’d presented a paper on an experimental treatment targeting rogue stem cells in early juvenile osteosarcoma.  It had been a damned good paper, more than good enough to catch the attention of, say, a recruiter for a major hospital eager to add a prestigious name to its cadre of experts.  Although he’d seldom taken part in it himself, House was well aware of the fine-tuned dance that sometimes went on between presenters and recruiters at conferences.  There were always subtle signals that told each side where the other stood.  Apparently, Wilson’s signals had been either welcoming or mixed enough to be taken as welcome.    
  
The next step in the dance would have been . . . yes, the tour.  Wilson had mentioned being impressed with the Kimmel Center.  House had thought nothing of it at the time; tours of the local hospitals were a common enough courtesy extended to attendees at most large conferences, particularly to speakers.  This might have been one such tour, but based on what he now knew, House was willing to bet it had been something a bit more intensive.  
  
Next, dinner with one or more of the hospital’s directors, appreciative and impressed comments about the paper, mention that Johns Hopkins was looking for someone with the right credentials for a certain position . . .  Yeah.  It was fairly obvious how things had gone down.  
  
The only question now was, _why?_   Because, clearly, all this had taken place well before the – the _incident_ – on Christmas Eve, so there couldn’t be a connection:  Wilson _wasn’t_ leaving just because House had rejected his advances.  His _wholly inappropriate_ advances.  Therefore, there had to be another reason, and House would have to find out what it was.  
  
But not now.  It was nearly time for Wilson to return from rounds, and the last thing House wanted was for Wilson to find him here.  Carefully, he replaced the letter on the desk in the exact position it had held when he entered the room, then made sure the desk chair was in its usual place before easing out the balcony door and locking it behind him.  Two minutes later he was in his own office, and two minutes after that he was to all appearances absorbed by the patient file Cameron had left on his desk  
  
Appearances were deceiving.  
  
  
 * * * * *   
  
_This was a dream, because he was running, and since the Ketamine had failed him, dreams were the only place that could happen any more.  He wasn’t running from anything, and there was nothing he was running to.  He was just running, the way he used to do when he was a whole man and could run painlessly, simply for the pleasure of it.  
  
The dream scenes he moved through were a melange of places he knew and places he’d never been – city streets, well-kept running trails, country roads, beach sand; changing from one to another, from noon to night to dawn and back to evening.  He ran and ran, his legs moving smoothly, his breath coming deeply and evenly, his thoughts slipping away into the pleasant buzz of exercise.  He gave himself over to it, the easy, mechanical stride, stride, stride.  There was woodland around him now, he was running down a forest trail which curved away out of sight  ahead of him.  He rounded the curve, and only then saw that his next steps would take him over the edge of the ravine that lay concealed just beyond it.  
  
He began to fall, flailing, his arms windmilling as he tried to stop his forward motion, but too late:  his body was already overbalancing into the chasm.  He would fall, he would die.  His mouth opened for a final scream – and a hand caught at his arm, yanking him impossibly back away from the air and onto the solid earth, where he reeled and collapsed, gasping, shaking with the adrenaline that burned through him.    
  
“Didn’t see it coming, did you?”  _  
_  
Wilson’s voice.  Wilson himself, squatting down to look at House as he sprawled in the damp dirt of the trail.  
  
“How did you miss it? Were you paying attention?”  
  
House could only slump there, chest still heaving, muscles still trembling with shock.  He glanced over, but somehow couldn’t make himself meet Wilson’s eyes.    
  
Slowly, Wilson stood up again.  Staring down at House, he said softly, “How did you miss something this big?”  
  
Then he was gone._  
  
He was gone, and House was lying in bed, still shaking with the aftereffects of terror, his leg a throbbing mass of pain from ankle to hip that brought tears to his eyes.  Ignoring his plans to stretch out his supply, he grabbed for the Vicodin on his nightstand, dry-swallowed a double dose, and lay back, willing the tension out of his body, willing the dream back down into his subconscious.  Ever since the infarction he had hated running dreams, hated the way they tortured him with things he could never have again.    
  
Turning over, he pushed the dream as far from his thoughts as he could.    
  
By morning, he could barely remember any of it.  
  
  
 * * * * *     
  
  
“Why” was a question he was used to asking.  It was one he asked routinely, every day, especially when his department had a case.  
  
    _Why is this patient sick?  
  
    Why are the tests all coming back negative?  
  
    Why isn’t this treatment working?  
  
    Why do all my patients lie to me?_  
  
He knew by experience and instinct how to ferret out the answers to those and a thousand other “whys”, how to use his formidable intellect and his powers of observation and his vast medical knowledge to balance the probability of one “why” against another, discarding the ones that didn’t weigh right until he was left with the last one, the solution.  In the realm of medicine, few “whys” escaped him.  
  
But in other realms . . .   
  
_Why is Wilson leaving?_  
  
The question woke up with him every day, and was his last conscious thought every night.  It wasn’t that he _cared_ that Wilson was leaving:  sure, he’d been shocked at first, but before long he’d come to realize that since the other man had essentially destroyed their friendship anyway it was just as well.  But he hated not being able to answer that question – hated it all the more because, when the inevitable rumors began to float around the hospital, people were going to start wondering and speculating and outright asking him what he knew about it.  All he did know was that the reasons Wilson had given to Cuddy were pure and simple bullshit – he had no idea what Wilson’s real reasons were.  
  
 _And you should have,_ a voice kept whispering inside him.  _He was your friend.  Why didn’t he let you know?_  
  
He hated not knowing things.  Wilson _knew_ that.    
  
Damn Wilson.    
  
Arriving at work every morning, he braced himself for the questions he was sure he’d be asked.  But the mornings, and the days that followed them, were all much as they ever were, as if nothing had changed.  He couldn’t imagine why at first, but then after a few days it became clear.  
  
There were no rumors.   No questions, no speculation.  
  
Because nobody knew Wilson was leaving.  
  
Wilson had told Cuddy, but apparently nobody else.  Cuddy, it seemed, had only mentioned it to House and kept quiet about it otherwise, perhaps because she still entertained the hope that she could find some way to persuade her best oncologist to stay on.  House had seen the offer letter, now more than a month old, but he didn’t know what Wilson’s response had been.  Was he trying to arrive at a mutually satisfactory start date?  Negotiating for better terms?  Was he re-thinking?  Or (since leaving had clearly been on his mind for a while now), was he expecting an offer from another hospital, perhaps an even better one, and holding off on the Kimmel Center until he knew for sure?  
  
There was no way to know.  No way for House to tell what was going on in the office right next door to his own.  Yet, ironically, it appeared that House knew more than anyone except Wilson himself about what Wilson was going to do –  but only because Wilson hadn’t been speaking to another soul about it.  Which meant there was no one for House to ask, no one for him to try to pry information out of, no files to steal.  He’d broken into Wilson’s office two or three more times during rounds, only to find that Wilson was apparently handling everything from home or his cell phone.  The offer letter had disappeared; even the computer on his desk was innocent of so much as an email that wasn’t work-related.    
  
Wilson and his damned ethics.  House sat at his own desk, brooding.  If this were one of his cases, if Wilson were a patient, what would the next step be?    
  
_Send someone to check out the environmental factors.  Look at what’s going on at home.  Find whatever it is the patient isn’t telling me about._  
  
Send someone.  Well, hardly.  Go himself, then?     
  
He considered this, leaning back in his chair and tossing the toy ball back and forth.  Wilson would be at work all day; in fact there was a department heads’ meeting this afternoon.  Wilson always went to those, while House always avoided going unless he was dragged by Wilson or threatened by Cuddy with enough Clinic hours to be more painful than the meeting.   No one would expect to see him there today; he didn’t have a –   
  
The door from the Diagnostics Conference Room opened, and Chase came in with a file.  “We’ve got a case.  26-year-old female, presenting with chronic diarrhea of more than four months’ duration, skin lesions, memory loss – ”    
  
House snatched the file out of his hand and flipped it open, running his eyes quickly over the pages of symptoms and test results.  He closed it again and handed it back.  “ _Acrodermatitis Enteropathica_.  Boring.  Load her up with zinc and send her on her way.  And tell whoever gave you this to look at the whole panel next time, not just the tox and infectious disease parts.”  
  
Chase gaped at him for a second, then started to splutter.  “But you  – you barely even _looked_ at the file!  How can you be sure –”    
  
House grabbed for the file again and flipped to the blood chemistry readouts, then shoved it back under Chase’s nose.  “Look at the figure for zinc – practically non-existent.  Patient history –” he ruffled a few pages, “– says she’s a raw-food vegetarian, which is one of the highest risk groups for this kind of deficiency.  Anyone could put the pieces together just from the file – hell, once she told them what her diet was, a deficiency disease should have been the _first_ thing to come to mind.  Tell them to admit her, start treating her with zinc, and tell her she needs to keep up with her supplements from now on.”  
  
Chase took the file.  Still looking a bit stunned, he turned and went back out to the Conference Room.  The door, swinging silently behind him, caught on a loose piece of carpet and didn’t quite close, so that Foreman’s “Pay up,” was clearly audible.  
  
“Fifteen seconds,” House heard Chase say, disbelievingly.  _“Fifteen seconds!”_  
  
“You’ve known him _how_ long, and you’re surprised by that?  This is why you need to let Cameron go through the files.  She’s got a better eye for the stuff he likes.”  
  
“Yeah, well, she’s down in the Clinic doing some of _his_ hours for him.  She can’t look for cases at the same time, and he’s impossible lately.  I thought this might . . . take the edge off, or something.”  
  
“He’s always impossible.  And you still owe me fifty bucks.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah . . .”  
  
The door finished closing.  House frowned, then turned back to thinking about how to get into Wilson’s apartment.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
There were boxes all over, with the usual words.  “Living room”, “Bathroom”, “Kitchen” (lots of those), “Bedroom”.  Some filled, some still waiting.  The rooms still had most of their furniture, but without pictures on the walls or books on the shelves they wore a stripped and vacant look.  But then they were probably used to it:  this was a short-term-lease building after all, someplace to stay in between other places.  Wilson had lived here for nearly a year, now.  
  
Getting into the apartment had been child’s play.  He’d walked up to the building supervisor, introduced himself politely and exhibited his hospital I.D., then explained that the hospital had recently admitted someone with a serious condition, _Acrodermatitis Enteropathica_.  Apparently she’d lived here within the past six months, but she had moved out and didn’t remember the unit number, only the floor.  Memory loss was one of the symptoms.  Could he take samples from all the second-floor units, please?  Sure, he’d be happy to give her name if the supervisor wanted to look her up, but he’d still need access to the entire floor; there was no telling which of the neighbors she might have been visiting when she was here, after all. Of course the building supervisor was welcome to stay with him all the time.   
  
He had gone solemnly from unit to unit, following a routine, taking samples everywhere, solemnly making notes, to all appearances treating Wilson’s apartment in just the same way he did all the others.  Then he’d solemnly thanked the manager and left, tossing the sample kits into a dumpster several blocks south.  All he’d needed for his analysis had been right there in front of him in Apartment 204.  Boxes on the floor, moving quotes on the table, next to lists of addresses and phone numbers for apartment buildings in Baltimore.    
  
Now he sat at his desk again in the early evening, poring over the notes from Wilson’s place.  Going through three other apartments before he could get to Wilson’s had been frustrating, but it had also meant that by the time he did reach his target the building supervisor was thoroughly bored and no longer paying much attention, hanging out by the front door while House prowled through the various rooms.  His slow pace at the other places meant that he could speed up when he was out of the man’s sight, going through whatever he could find at a rapid clip while still seeming to be just as thorough and painstaking here as elsewhere.   
  
So now he had observations, memories, and notes, for all the good they did him.  So far as he had seen, what had been happening was exactly what he’d thought it was.  The sequence of conference, tour, implied interest, final approach and ultimate acceptance were all borne out by everything he’d found, especially the message pad Wilson kept next to his bedroom telephone.  House had jotted down names and numbers for possible future use, and noted everything else that might be even slightly relevant.  What Wilson was doing, where he was going, when he expected to be there – House had all of it.  What he didn’t have was what he wanted.  What he still didn’t know was _why_.     
  
He sat staring into space, rubbing at the scar on his leg, trying to ignore the pounding ache.  He had to come up with something else to try, because treating this as he would a typical Diagnostics case had taken him about as far as he could go.  If he kept following that model, then the next step, the one he was always least willing to take, was to actually talk to the patient. And in this instance not only did he not want to talk to the patient, he knew perfectly damned well that the patient would lie through his lying teeth.  Maybe he should . . .   
  
He looked up as his door opened, then rolled his eyes as Cuddy walked slowly across the office to stand by his desk.  She was frowning, of course; she always frowned when she had to come up to talk to him.  
  
“What?”     
  
“First of all, undo the forwarding on your phone.  I’ve been trying to reach you for the last twenty minutes, and sending all your calls to a sex line is neither professional nor funny.”  
  
“Wondered how long it would take you to notice.  It’s been that way for three days, now.”  Actually, he’d done it just after he got back from checking out Wilson’s place, but there was no sense in missing a chance to yank Cuddy’s chain.    
  
“House.”  
  
“Okay, okay.  I’ll fix it.  What else?”   
  
“You weren’t at the department heads’ meeting this afternoon – ”  
  
“How many clinic hours this time?  Twenty?  Forty?”  
  
“– so you missed Wilson’s announcement that his last day is a week from Friday.”  
  
Oh.     
  
He’d known it was coming; he’d _known_.  It shouldn’t hurt this way.    
  
It _shouldn’t_ hurt this way, dammit, they weren’t even _friends_ any longer, he was just trying to . . . trying to satisfy his curiosity.  He didn’t care when Wilson left; as far as he was concerned Wilson was already gone. Why the pain now, why did it hurt like this, why . . .   
  
Why, why, and forever goddamned _why??_     
                                                                              
“Yeah, that,” he said nonchalantly.  He didn’t look at her.  
  
“House . . .” she sighed.  “There’s going to be a good-bye party.  You are going to be there.  You are going to sign the card and you’re going to wish him well.”  
  
“No, I’m _not_.  Why the hell should I – he hasn’t said a word to me in almost a month.”  _And he’s leaving._  He clamped down on the hurt, not to let her see it.  
  
“You _will_ be there, or I’ll see to it that you are in the clinic every hour of every day that Diagnostics doesn’t have a case.”  
  
“And I’ll grieve it, and I’ll be upheld, and you’ll just look stupid as well as incompetent.”  
  
Cuddy pressed her lips together, her eyes sparking.  “I know you’re upset by this –”  
  
“No.”  
  
“– and I’m making allowances for that, House.  But you’re coming to the party.”  She turned to leave.  “And fix your phone.  _Now_.”   
  
He’d re-set the phone before she got into the elevator, since it wasn’t funny anymore.  
  
Nothing was funny anymore.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
_He was cold.  Cold, and wet, and scared, and he couldn’t stop the shaking, and the only warm place in the water around him was where he’d just peed himself.  And his father stood there and dumped another bag of ice over his head and there were two more bags on the floor next to him and Greg was already cold; his skin was turning blue and he shook and even his pee in the water wasn’t warm any more but his tears were.  They ran hot down his face and mixed with his snot, and he choked and his whole body was shivering and skinny in the unforgiving water.  
  
“You deserve this, you little __sissy_ _.  Don’t you? Don’t you?”    
  
If he answered, his voice would shake like the rest of him.  If he didn’t answer –  
  
His father grabbed him by the back of the neck and pushed down, forcing his head under the water, holding it there and holding it and holding it down under the cold until Greg screamed the last of his air into the water, knew he had to breathe the water in, had to drown now.  Then his father yanked him back out and he shook and gasped and sobbed and the tears felt warm, felt good, but the shame was colder than the water._  
 _  
“You little Miss Nancy.  Little perv.  You’re going to stay in here, Greggy boy, until you can tell me what that little willie of yours is for, and it’s not for pissing yourself with, do you hear me?”  
  
His teeth were chattering so he could barely speak.  “Y . . . yes.”  
  
“Yes, __what_ _?”  
  
“Yes, Sir.  Y . . yes S . . Sir, I . . . I hear you.”  His voice was tiny, swallowed up in the hugeness of his father’s rage.  
  
“What’s it for, boy?”  
  
“It . . .  it . . .”_  
 _  
“We’ve had this conversation before, Greg.  Don’t make me get out the timer.  Tell me what your willie’s for, and what it’s not for.”  
  
The gentleness in that voice was worse than all the cold in the world.  
  
He tried.  He tried and tried, and every time his body shook too hard, and his jaws were too stiff with cold, and now he was going to puke, he could feel the burn at the back of his throat.  Still, he tried to answer, but the shaking and the shivering and the nausea were too much, and he vomited helplessly into the water, and felt his father’s hand at the back of his neck again.  
  
He was twelve years old, and small, and there was no one to help him, and he was sure that this time he was going to die.  _  
  
  
* * * * * :   
  
He came back to reality curled tight into foetal position, his face wet, his body shaking, the taste of vomit in his throat and the cold sheets soaked underneath him.  Slowly, the present coalesced around him and he breathed and breathed and breathed, long, deep breaths of sweet, dry air.    
  
It seemed to take forever to straighten; his muscles were locked and cramping, and the first thing he did once he was on his feet and had a couple of Vicodin in him was to half-limp and half-stagger to the thermostat in the living room and push it as high as it would go.  He never let it get below 75 anyway, but now he was _cold_ , cold to the bone:   it would take hours, he knew, before he felt warm again.    
  
A glance at the clock told him it was just before three in the morning, but he had no intention of trying to sleep.  Not tonight.  He limped to the bathroom, pulled off the damp shirt and wet boxers and started to get into the shower, automatically stepping over the bag of ice on the floor next to the tub.  
  
He flinched back, blinking.  It wasn’t there, of course it wasn’t.  This was a different bathroom and a different tub and a different _time:_ the room was warm and there was no ice here.  He gritted his teeth, climbed into the tub, and turned the shower on, then stood under the hot, hot water until it became tepid and he could feel the warmth of the tears on his face.  
  


 


	3. Point d'appui

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What good is an answer you can't do anything with?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Mention & mild description of child abuse in this chapter.

It was past lunch time.  He wasn’t hungry, but he knew he had to eat; he’d skipped lunch yesterday and dinner last night, and this morning the mere thought of food had turned his stomach.  Now he could at least tolerate the idea of eating, although he didn’t relish the pain the walk to the cafeteria would cost him.  He’d taken the last of the Vicodin this morning; he hadn’t yet been able to make himself go to Cuddy to ask for a scrip.  
  
He was digging  around in his backpack, searching for his wallet as he stared out the window, when the door to his office suddenly opened.  He turned, bracing himself for another lecture about his billings or his clinic hours.  But it was Wilson, not Cuddy, who stood there.  
  
For a moment, House could only stare at him.  Then he blinked, half-expecting the other man to disappear, to melt away like . . . like other hallucinations did.  But Wilson stayed put, his hands on his hips, his lips pressed together tight, the way they were when he was mad about something.  
  
“I don’t believe you.  I _don’t believe_ you, House.”  
  
House stood there, backpack in one hand, wallet in the other, and wondered what he was feeling.  Wilson didn’t belong here anymore, he wasn’t welcome, and House should say so.  But he could only look at Wilson, taking in the dark skin under his eyes that hadn’t been there a month ago, the way he seemed to have forgotten to style his hair the way he usually did.  A lock of it was falling over his eyes; it was a stupid thing to focus on, but House couldn’t stop.    
  
“Breaking into my office I can understand.  Messing with my computer, even.  But what is it with you?  You don’t want me around, you won’t talk to me, you insult me when I try to talk to you, but then you _break into my apartment??_ ”    
  
House said nothing.  Wilson was holding the door open, and there was a chilly draft coming in from the hallway.  
  
“You honestly thought I wouldn’t find out?  You’re a genius, but you’re not smart enough to realize that the super would ask me questions about the doctor who came from the hospital where he knows I work and went through all the second-floor apartments?  _Only_ the second-floor apartments?  You thought I wouldn’t recognize you from the description?”  
  
House put his wallet down on the desk and  turned away slowly until he faced the window again.  “He didn’t look all that bright,” he replied at last, surprised at how normal his voice was.  He couldn’t look at Wilson any more.  Seeing him there brought it back, made his leaving real.  
  
“Obviously he’s brighter than _you_ ,” Wilson answered, sarcastically.  He came further into the office, letting the door close behind him, cutting off the draft from the hallway.  “Why, House?  Why did you do it?”  His voice had changed; there was a kind of uncertainty in it now, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to ask.  
  
“I . . .”  It was hard to talk; he was too close to the windows, where the cold air was seeping through from outside.  “I . . .  wanted to know,” he admitted, staring out at the snow on the double balcony.  
  
“Wanted to know . . . ?”  
  
“Why you’re . . . going.”   
  
“You could have asked,” Wilson said, his voice softer, nearer.  
  
“I knew you wouldn’t tell me.  Not the truth.”  He turned around.   Wilson was standing only a few feet away, reaching out.  “Don’t touch me,” House said, backing up a step, then almost falling when his bad leg seized with pain.  He dropped the backpack and clutched at the back of the desk chair, feeling the chill reach out to him from the windows.  
  
Wilson’s face twisted.  “I’m not going to.  Here.”  He reached out again to put something on House’s desk:  a piece of paper.   
  
House stared at it, not recognizing it for a moment.  
  
“I wrote it for a ninety-day supply,” Wilson was saying.  “After that . . . after that, I guess Cuddy will write for you, or . . . or Chase.  Or one of your other fellows.”  
  
Numbly, House picked up the scrip, looking from the piece of paper to Wilson and back again.  “Why?”  
  
Wilson raised his chin a little, pressing his lips together.  Not looking at House, he said, “Because in spite of . . . everything, I don’t want to think of you being in pain.”    
  
“You keep insisting the pain’s all in my head,” House answered automatically.   
  
“Not . . . all of it, House.  I know that.  But even psychosomatic pain is still pain.”  
  
The hand that held the scrip was shaking.  Carefully, House put the piece of paper down on the desk.  “Thanks,” he said quietly, and Wilson nodded, still not making eye contact with him.  When he spoke again, the strain in his voice was obvious.  
  
“You said you wanted to know why I’m leaving.  It’s . . . it’s because sometimes you realize you’ve done all you can, and there’s nothing left.  And . . . this is that time for me.  I . . . I’ll miss you, House.  I . . .”  His voice trailed off, and he spread his hands a little, obviously expecting some kind of response.  But House had no answer to make:  he could only stand there, head bent, staring at the desk,  his knuckles white as he gripped the back of the chair, forcing himself to stay upright.  
  
Wilson took a deep breath.  “And . . . and so I’ve done what I came for.”  He turned away then, and walked across the room and out the door, leaving House shivering in the cold of his office.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
_I’ve done what I came for._  
  
The words echoed in his thoughts as he made his way painfully down to the pharmacy, handed in the scrip, waited for the pharmacist on duty to fill it.  The bottle was barely in his hand before he got it open and took two, then shoved the bottle into his pocket and started for the cafeteria.  He really needed to eat now; Vicodin on an empty stomach tended to hit him harder and make him slightly woozy.  
  
He’d meant to grab some food, pay, and take it back to his office to eat, but that suddenly seemed like too much effort, so he took a tray and headed for a booth at the back of the room, as far as possible from the one where he and Wilson used to eat together.  Once there, he settled in with a sigh of relief, leaning against the wall and stretching his bad leg along the seat.  He unwrapped his sandwich and started eating.  
  
It was over a month now since that other encounter on Christmas Eve.  He had deliberately avoided thinking about it after it happened, because he hadn’t been sure the whole thing wasn’t some kind of elaborate hallucinatory experience.  And then there had been the news about Wilson, and he’d had other things to think about.  But what he needed now was a distraction from those other things, and the memory of the woman he’d met in that crappy bar would do.     
  
Apart from the content of her conversation, she hadn’t _sounded_ crazy – but then his brief rotation through a psych ward during his residency had been enough to teach him that people could sound completely rational while still being profoundly disturbed.  The bartender, though, obviously hadn’t seen her, and if she’d taken that beer bottle with her she was either a really tidy guardian angel or the product of some profound disturbance of his own.  And, well.  He was confident of his own sanity – but then, a lot of the patients in the psych ward had been equally confident of theirs.  
  
Still, he had the feeling that there was something she had said that proved she was real, not a stress- or alcohol-induced hallucination.  He just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  She’d known about the . . . incident with Wilson; but then, if she was a product of his mind, she _would_ know that.  The tale she’d spun him had been interesting, but nothing he couldn’t have come up with on his own.  She wasn’t exactly his type; however, there was no rule saying you had to find your own hallucinations attractive.  
  
He finished the last of the sandwich and started to slide out of the booth, then went still as he looked across the room and saw Wilson, who had just come in and was chatting pleasantly with one of the Oncology fellows as they headed for the seating area.  Before House could duck back into the booth again, he saw Wilson notice him and abruptly change direction away from the booths and toward a table on the other side of the room.    
  
There was a strange sensation inside him at the sight – not so much at the now-common avoidance as at the sudden shift in Wilson’s countenance.  He’d gone from smiling to a neutral, closed-off expression, one House had seen him use in dealing with patients he didn’t like but wasn’t about to be rude to.  For just a second, though, House had seemed to see a look of pain in the other man’s eyes as they met his in the instant before Wilson turned away.  
 _  
“ . . . You were rather needlessly cruel to a good friend . . .”_  
  
He got up and limped out of the cafeteria.  The pounding ache in his leg had eased, but there was still that odd, stiff feeling in his chest.  And in the back of his thoughts, it was as if a clock had started up, ticking off days and hours and minutes – or maybe it had been there for awhile and he had just now become aware.  Today was Thursday.  As of tomorrow, there would be exactly one week remaining before Wilson was gone for good.   And House still didn’t know why.  
  
  
* * * * *   
_  
Water.  
  
He thrashed in his sleep, moaning.  No.  No, please, not again.  
  
But now he saw that it was different.  Saw it, felt it.    
  
He wasn’t in the water this time, he was standing still and looking at it, a great pool of it, clear and shallow at his feet, shading off into green-blue depths further out.  Not cold water, but warm:   hot water, small vapors and tendrils of steam rising into the air.  There was nothing to fear here, no bags of ice, no cold.    
  
It welcomed him.  It welcomed him, and he wanted it, wanted that warmth.  He was tired, and the water would support him, cradle him, let him rest.  He was in pain, and it would soothe him, relax the tension, pour its heat over the twisted scar and loosen the tightness beneath.  His mouth was dry, he was arid inside, and the water would slake the thirst that he seemed to have had since his birth.  He was lonely.  
  
He was lonely, and there, only a few yards away, Wilson was standing in the water which came to just above his hips.  Naked, relaxed, skimming his hands lightly over the top of the water, his head tilted a little as he looked calmly at House, his face wearing what House had always thought of as Wilson’s caring expression.  Wilson swept his hands through the water, bringing them together, cupping a double handful of the clear warm liquid.  He held it out to House.  
  
“Are you coming in?”  
  
Without thinking, House took a step towards him before he remembered.  The water might look warm, it might be warm for Wilson, but not if House ventured into it.  No matter how tempting it seemed, it could hold nothing for him but ice. He stayed motionless, yearning.    
  
Wilson’s expression turned a little sad, but still he held his cupped hands out in offering, the water clear and sweet between them, and still House longed for it, longed for the water, for the warmth, for Wilson.  And still he couldn’t move, he was frozen and chilled and with the warm water all around him there was yet no way for him to reach it.  
  
“Remember,” Wilson said then.  “Remember how I came to you.  That’s where your answer is, House.  That’s where you’ll find it.”  Then suddenly he dropped his hands down into the pool and raked a great splash of the water at House, his face mischievous.  House flinched as it hit, but the water was warm, warm – and he stared at the other man in astonishment.  
  
“Sometimes,” Wilson said, “only direct methods work.”_  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
 He slept through the night this time, not awakening until the alarm went off and it was Friday, and the dream had faded just beyond the reach of his waking mind.   
  
There was a week left to him.  He was tired, and he hurt, and his mouth was dry, and in a week Wilson would be gone.  And there was something – something he should remember.  Something important that had to do with Wilson. He groaned and sat up, scrubbing at his face and groping for the bottle of pills.    
  
Friday.  Another day at work, and then, unless he was lucky and they got a case, a weekend.  Two vacant days:   barren, boring, offering the choice between getting drunk in front of the television or getting drunk in a bar somewhere and risking getting his keys confiscated and having to pay for a taxi or limp home in the cold, since there would be no one he could call for a ride.  
  
He dragged himself out of bed, made his way to the bathroom, peed and stripped and turned on the shower, got in.  Steam wafted up around him.  The warmth felt welcoming, felt –   
  
His eyes, closed against the water, snapped open.  Hesitantly, he brought his hands up, cupped them, and let the shower pour water into them, watching as it filled the bowl of his fingers and ran down over his hands, warm and clear.  There was something, an image tickling at the back of his thoughts, whatever it was he’d forgotten earlier.  It had to do with water in someone’s hands.  
  
Not his own.  
  
Wilson’s hands.  
  
Wilson, in the water, with the steam rising around him, telling him something.    
  
_Remember . . ._  
  
Remember _what?_   What was it that was so important, why did the answer seem so close?  So close he was almost holding it here, cupped between his hands, if he could only remember.  One thing, otherwise unimportant, something that had gone past him unnoticed, some one thing that was the key to all of this.    
  
He stared and stared at the water in his hands, but if there was an answer there, the water was too clear to show it to him.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
There was no case for Diagnostics, which meant Cuddy would expect him to work the Clinic today.  He had fewer hiding places in winter:   the balcony, the roof, the park across the way were all more or less unavailable in late January.  _But sometimes_ , he thought, _the best place to hide is in plain sight.  
_  
So, when she came looking, he was in the place she least expected to find him:  his office, diligently occupied with –   
  
“You’re doing your _billings?_ ”  She was staring at him as if she’d found him doing the can-can atop his desk.  It would almost have been more likely.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Why?” she spluttered, completely distracted from the lecture she’d been about to deliver.  
  
“Because if I’m doing this, you won’t make me work the Clinic,” he answered simply.    
  
She breathed in an annoyed breath through her nose, her eyes narrowed.  “I don’t trust you.”  
  
He turned the computer screen to show her the hospital’s accounting software, then gestured to the stack of files on the desk.  “Does this look like I’m lying?”  
  
“You never do your billings until I threaten to fire all your staff, shut down your department and assign you to Pediatrics.  And then you make Cameron do them.  Why now?”  
  
“You’d never really assign me to Peds.  I’m a bad influence.”  
  
“Changing bedpans, then.  Why now?”  
  
He sighed. “I told you.  It’s either this or the Clinic, and I’ve had my fill of morons this week.”  
  
She shook her head slowly.  “I still don’t trust you.”  
  
“You wound me.”  He turned back to the screen, rapidly typing in numbers.  
  
“This had better not be some kind of joke.  I’m going to have Accounting check those, House, and if you’ve screwed up the codings again – ”  
  
“You should know by now I never repeat the same prank twice.”  
  
“No, you come up with new and even more annoying ones.”  
  
He shrugged, and didn’t bother answering.  
  
“You know, if you ever tried to _keep_ an office assistant, you could have them do this.  Billings, codings, monthly statistics – ”  
  
“The last time I wanted to hire one you wouldn’t let me.”  
  
“That’s because only _you_ would think a background in erotic massage qualified someone to work as an office assistant.”  
  
“Hey, she didn’t _only_ look good on paper.”  
  
Cuddy rolled her eyes, and stood for another moment watching him enter numbers into the computer.  Finally she turned to leave, suspicion still evident in her expression.  “Fine.  If you really are working on your billings, I’ll let you skip the Clinic for today.  But I’d better see a lot of finished billings, House, or you’ll do nothing _but_ the Clinic for the foreseeable future.”  
  
“I’ll get more done faster if I’m not distracted,” he pointed out.  
  
She huffed angrily and stalked away, shaking her head.  
  
Good.  Absent another case, he was safe now for the rest of the afternoon.  Sitting here entering numbers he could do more or less by rote, which meant he could give most of his attention to trying, one more time, to figure out just what it was he didn’t know he knew about Wilson.  
  
He let his mind drift, recalling the moments in the shower earlier that morning, trying to reconstruct the dream they had brought back to his mind.  Water.  Wilson’s voice, telling him to remember.  And saying something else.  Something he’d heard before, in another voice, in another place.  He recognized his own symptoms; the connection was _there_ , it had to be:   his mind was trying to tell him an answer he knew but wasn’t yet conscious of knowing.  If he could just bring it all together . . .   
  
He put himself into a near-trance, trying to shake the connection loose through free association.  He thought about things that had no relation at all to the problem, searching for insights in unlikely places.  He focused on minute details of Wilson’s appearance and attitude when they had spoken yesterday, trying to see if something there had been a clue.  And all the while, the numbers flashed on the screen before him as he absently keyed them in, his hands setting one folder aside and reaching for the next, until he blinked and found that he was groping across the desk for a file that wasn’t there.    
  
He’d finished?  He’d finished.  The entire stack of billings, almost a whole quarter’s worth – late, yes, because they should have been done in December – but finished.  Done.  And he still didn’t know –   
  
A thud and a muffled scraping sound came through the wall from the office on the other side, where there had been nothing but silence for weeks now.    _Wilson,_ he thought automatically.  _Probably taking one of his framed movie posters down._ Another thump and a muffled exclamation confirmed it.  Although he didn’t want to think about what the noises meant, just knowing Wilson was only a few feet away made things feel . . . right.  Familiar.  As if he could open his own door, walk the few yards along the corridor, push the other door open, and just ask.  
 _  
Sometimes, only direct methods work,_ said the twin voices in his memory, in perfect unison.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
“Why?” he asked, standing in the doorway.  
  
Wilson, startled, stepped back from where he’d been trying to wrestle another of the posters off its hangers and whirled to face him. For just a second, his expression was the familiar, friendly one House knew, but then the forced neutrality came over it, and Wilson’s eyes went dull.  “What are you doing here?” he replied, suspicion plain in his tone.    
  
“Asking you a question.”  
  
Wilson looked at him for a moment, then sighed and turned back to the poster.  “Go away, House.”  
  
“You told me I could ask.  I’m asking.”  
  
Wilson didn’t answer, just kept his face to the wall.  
  
“Wilson.  Just . . . tell me.  Why?”  
  
The other man’s shoulders slumped.  “Why _what,_ House?”  House suspected the tone was supposed to be impatient, but it came out sad instead.    
  
“Why you’re leaving.”  He stepped into the office and let the door close behind him, sealing them off from the drafts in the corridor.  
  
Wilson shifted; even from behind House could see the way he drew his whole body tight, as if anticipating pain.  He didn’t answer.  
  
“Tell me,” House insisted.  “And not the crap reason you gave Cuddy.  I want the truth.”  
  
“House . . .” Wilson exhaled the name on a long breath of pain.  “I would have thought that you were the only person here who _did_ know why.”     
  
“What the hell does _that_ mean?”  
  
Wilson rounded on him then, with the look of a man pushed past what he could take.  “It means, you asshole, that it’s _you_ , okay?  _You_ are the reason I’m leaving – yes, House, it all comes down to _you_ in the end.  Are we done here?  Is your ego satisfied now, or do I have to give you another reason to . . . to slice me open and tear my heart out?  You’ve rejected me, you’ve made it plain you want nothing more to do with me.  But it seems that’s not enough, no, you have to come in here and rub it in.  Fine.  Say it.  Say whatever it is you came here for, and _get the hell out_ , because I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”  
  
His voice broke; he brought his hands up to cover his face and turned back to the wall.  “Say it and leave, House,” he said, his voice muffled.  “And for god’s sake, don’t come back here.”     
  
Stunned, House stared at the other man for a long moment, before a wave of fury broke over him.  _He expects me to believe that?  How stupid does he think – _  
  
“Bullshit,” he said, brutally.  “If you’re going to lie to me, at least make it a good lie.”  
  
“I.  Am.  Not.  _Lying!!_ ”  The words seemed to be ripped from Wilson’s throat.  
  
“Yes, you _are!_   You _are_ lying to me, damn you – I _saw_ the offer letter, I saw the _date_ on it.  You’ve been planning this for ages, you goddamned lying SOB; you probably started this back in _October,_ and you didn’t proposition _me_ until Christmas Eve!  So don’t tell me it’s _me_ who’s the problem, Wilson, because I’m not that fucking stupid, all right?”  
  
Wilson spun around, and House took an involuntary step back, away from the incandescent rage that poured from the man in a flood.  “ _Not that fucking stupid!?_   **_No_** , you’re not!  You’re way, way more stupid than that!  Look, you jackass, do you . . . do you think falling in love with someone is like falling down the goddamned _stairs?_   Just something that happens all at once, and then it's over?  You _idiot!_   I went through this for _months_ , you fucking _led me on!_   Flirt with me, touch me, sit too close to me, stand too close to me, look at me with . . . with those flashing eyes, wink at me, eat lunch with me every day, give me a place to stay when I need it . . .  Jesus _Christ,_ House, of course I thought . . . I thought – ”  He paused, sucking in sobbing breaths for a moment, then went on more quietly.  “But then you never followed up.  You’d wind me up and . . . and just leave me like that, like you didn’t notice, like you didn’t _care_.  And I couldn’t go on that way, and . . . and I knew if I asked, if I pushed, and you, you didn’t . . . I wouldn’t be able to stay.   I can’t _live_ this way, House.  I can’t.  I want to fall apart every time I see you, just _see_ you in the hall.  If I asked, and you – I had to have somewhere to go.  I have to get away.”   Wilson’s whole body sagged and he looked down at the floor, his expression one of utter misery.  
  
 _Months?  
  
Was it . . . did I do those things?  How did . . . how could I, it should have . . .  I wasn’t cold, I was never cold, and I would have been . . . if I knew.    
  
If I knew.    
  
I didn’t see it, I didn’t let myself know.  I missed it – right in front of me, and somehow I made myself miss it.  Because –  
  
Because I could only have it if I didn’t know what it was.  _  
  
“Months?” House asked, his throat gone tight.  Then Wilson hadn’t been lying, and – and what was more, _she_ had been telling the truth as well.  The memory of that bar conversation came back again, clear and vivid.  
  
“Yeah,” Wilson was saying wearily.  “Christmas Eve was . . . the night I decided I’d try.  I almost didn’t.  I . . . I was so scared, I had to talk myself into it. I – ”  
  
“You walked around the block five times before you made up your mind to do it,” House said with utter conviction.  It was the last piece, the one that told him everything.  
  
Slowly, Wilson raised his head to stare at him.  “How the hell could you know that?” he whispered.  “ _How_ could you know that?”  
  
“I – ” There wasn’t an explanation he could give.  Not one that sounded plausible.  
  
“You _couldn’t_ know that.  It . . . it wasn’t even your block I was walking around, House, it was _mine_.  How?”  
  
“It’s a long story.”  One even he was only just now coming to believe.   He felt jolted inside, jumbled, as if pieces had been knocked loose within him and thrown about, ending up in such completely different places that he didn’t recognize himself any more.  _But she was real.  She was real.  And that means . . . if I’m supposed to be more the way . . . the way they are, all those others . . . then they . . . _ He swallowed, then began to shiver as the room got colder around him.  _It’s the one thing she told me, the only thing I couldn’t know myself, and it was that, which means __this_ _, the – the one thing I don’t think I can do.  But I have to, I’m supposed to . . ._  
  
“House?”  Wilson’s voice, a long way away, uncertain.  “You . . . you’re shaking.”  
  
“It’s the cold,” House whispered.  
  
“It’s not cold in here.”  
  
“Not for you.  It’s right for you.  I see that.  But I can’t get past it.”  _I can’t get past it.  I could never get past it.  I can’t do this_.  “The ice . . . always wins.”  He leaned hard on his cane as the cold within him increased and the shaking got worse.  “I’m sorry,” he added, turning slowly back toward the door.  “I . . . I’m sorry for . . . for all of it.”  
  
“House.  House, wait.  Are you – I don’t think you can – ”   
  
Wilson’s hand caught his arm just as the fall started.  House staggered for an instant; then Wilson was guiding him to the office couch.  House dropped onto it hard, and sat trembling with the waves of chill that went through him.  Wilson bent over him, the caring look plain on his face now.  Before House could warn him, he reached out to lay a gentle hand on the back of House’s neck, probably to feel for the signs of a fever.   
  
House yelled in panic, yelled and jerked away and fell sideways on the couch, curling up tight, shivering hard, tears welling into his eyes as he shook and shook.  Wilson, shocked, stepped back.  It seemed to take him a moment to find his voice.  When it came, it was rough with concern.  
  
“Who?  God, House, someone . . . someone hurt you, didn’t they?  Who?  Why – ” His voice trailed away uncertainly, and he straightened.  “Wait here.”  He nearly ran out his office door.  House closed his eyes, blinking back the tears.  He wanted to get up, get away, but he couldn’t move, he could only lie there and tremble.   
  
Wilson was back in under a minute, with a glass of water from the sink in the Diagnostics Conference Room.  Carefully, he helped House sit up, then stooped to offer him the glass, using both hands to steady it until House could still his shaking enough to take it.  
  
Wilson. Standing there, in front of House, his hands filled with water.  House looked at the glass, then at Wilson, and the chill within him lessened.  Wilson.  The water.  _My dream,_ he remembered, then, and a flood of warmth seemed to flow over him.  Hesitantly, he cupped his hands around Wilson’s and drank, until the glass was empty and Wilson set it aside and sat down next to him, just far enough away not to risk an accidental touch.  
  
“Can you tell me?”  The anger, the suspicion, the blame, were all gone from the other man’s voice, replaced by caring.  “I mean . . . not if you don’t want to, House.”  
  
“No . . . you – you deserve to know.”    
  
Slowly, painfully, he began to find the words.  Hating his scrawny pre-teen body, wanting to know how he could be stronger, more like his Marine colonel father.  The strangeness, and then the vague excitement, of finding that the pictures in the muscle-building books made him feel much the same way that the girls in his dad’s skin magazines did.   
  
Being caught by his father, staring at the men in the pictures, with that . . . that thing that happened along with the excited feeling.  Then the bathtub, and the ice, and the cold.  Not once, but again and again, any time he failed to meet the new, arbitrary rules for “manliness”.      
  
Learning, finally, to bury those feelings, encase them in ice, freeze them so deep within himself that even coming near them brought on the choking panic and the cold.   
  
Finished, he sat exhausted, wrung out, limp.  Next to him, Wilson was silent, making no effort to hide or wipe away the tears running in slow channels down his face.    
  
“House,” he said, finally.  “If I . . . god, if I’d _known_.  I – ”  
  
“You couldn’t.  It’s not your fault.”  
  
“I know.  But I – I’m _sorry_ , House.  I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Me, too.”  
  
Silence.    
  
Then, uncertainly, “Really?”  
  
“Of course, really.  Now that you . . . know, do you honestly think I _want_ you to leave?”  
  
“No.  But . . . do you want me to stay?”  
  
“I . . .  I . . .”  He groped for the words.  “I want you to . . . it wouldn’t be fair to you.  The . . . you’ve got a good job lined up, a _great_ job.  You could . . . do things there you can’t do here.  And . . . and I might not . . . I might never . . . get over this.”  
  
Wilson was silent for a long moment.  Then, slowly, choosing his words with care, he said, “The job is . . . it’s an escape hatch.  A way out, because I didn’t think I had a chance with you.  Now . . . if there _is_ a chance, then I know what I want.”  
  
House started to shiver, fought it down, focusing on the water glass sitting on Wilson’s desk.  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.  I . . . I can’t _promise_ you . . .”  
  
“I’m not looking for promises.  Only for the chance.”  
  
“I . . .”  
  
“Look at it this way.  If I stay, we can . . . we can try.  We can _both_ try, now that we know what’s going on.  And if we can tell it’s . . . not going to work out, then we’ll try to arrange it so we keep the friendship, all right?  I don’t think either of us wants to completely lose that.”  
  
“No.  I mean, you’re right.”  
  
“So . . .”  
  
“If you want to stay, stay,” House said wearily at last.  “I . . . I’ll do my best.  I _want_ to try.  It’s just . . . the damned _cold_ . . .”  He couldn’t stop it any more; he was shivering again.  
  
Wilson’s hand, warm, closed over his.  “We’ll break through the ice.  We’ll melt it away.  I’ll call the Kimmel Center on Monday and let them know I’ve had a better offer here.”  He smiled then.  “Because it’s true.”

 

 


	4. Centerpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> . . . and all shall be well.

He had to admit, Wilson seemed to have thought of everything.    
  
It was eight weeks since Wilson had unpacked the boxes, re-hung the posters, canceled the moving service and settled back into his life – and into House’s.  By some sort of unspoken mutual agreement, the two of them had let the friendship re-establish itself solidly before trying to move on to anything more, waiting until they were comfortable with each other again before introducing things that might upset the new, careful balance between them.  
  
They began gradually.   Wilson casually resting his hand on House’s, intertwining their fingers as they watched television, and House gripping the hand lightly instead of pulling away.   House tentatively laying his arm across Wilson’s shoulders and then actually relaxing instead of going rigid when Wilson leaned his head back against it.  Wilson daring to slide an arm around House’s waist and sit with his head on the other man’s shoulder, and House leaning his own head against Wilson’s.  Small beginnings, but filled with promise.  
  
They slept apart, Wilson going home at night to his own place, but they spent as many of their waking hours together as they could manage.  Neither of them thought of what they were doing as anything so definite as “dating”, but to all intents and purposes that was what it was.  Slowly, carefully, the intimacy between them became more and more solid.  And then, at lunch on a Friday, House had finally found the courage to ask Wilson to spend the weekend.  
  
“I’ll be . . . a little later than usual tonight, though,” Wilson had said, after a pause.  “I . . . I’ve had an idea.  There are some things I want to get for us.”  At House’s uncertain look, he’d added, softly, “It’ll be okay.  Really.”  House had nodded, and they’d left it at that.  
  
Now he was looking at the results, and trying to decide how he felt about them.  Good, he finally decided.  A little unsure, but good on the whole.  
  
His living room had been re-arranged so that a double air mattress could be set up in front of the fireplace, with a pillowtop pad, soft sheets and warm blankets, and an abundance of pillows.  The fire was burning, and the thermostat was set so that the room was almost tropical.     
  
Wilson came out of the kitchen with two glasses of white wine.  He sat down on the sofa and handed one to House, following his glance to the bed on the floor for a moment, then looking at him with a soft smile.    
  
“I . . . thought it might help if you could associate . . . us . . . with being warm,” he said.  “And . . . and if it doesn’t work out, you . . . you won’t . . .  You’ll still have your own space in your bedroom.”  
  
House nodded, then sipped at the wine to give himself a moment, watching the flames flicker.  
  
“Are you sure you want this?” Wilson asked, softly.  His hands were cupped around the bowl of his wineglass.  House set his own glass aside.    
  
“Yeah.  I’m sure.”  A small draft from somewhere crept around him, blowing across the back of his neck, but he looked at the fire, then at Wilson, then back at the flames.  He reached for the glass in Wilson’s hands, and Wilson let him drink from it.  
  
A moment later he reached for Wilson, and found him already reaching back.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
Warm.  Wilson’s mouth was warm, his hands were warm, his body . . . oh, his body.  Warm all along the length of House’s, letting no cold get near him.  The fire was at his back, the light from it ruddy on them both as they kissed and touched.    
  
Something molten was glowing inside House, some deep-buried heat stirring to life, rising up through channels long dormant with chill.  Some true, essential part of him, a comforting fire inside to match the glow of the flames on his skin.  Wilson was summoning it, drawing it up from the depths, his touch fueling it, his breath the air in which it burned. And so much was drawn up with it:  a slow, rich expansion of sensations, feelings, responses, growing and spreading throughout House, fire along his nerves, heat and languor in his muscles, desire in all of it, in his very bones.   
  
His own touch explored the other man, marveling and luxuriating, amazed and humbled by Wilson’s openness, his strength and his softness, the way he made no secret of wanting House, but yet was willing to wait, to stoke the fire slowly, until they were both burning with it, equally consumed with wanting, equally filled with the need to be close and tight and hot together, to press and hold and thrust and slide, twin fires suddenly coalescing into one brilliant, searing moment of flame.  
  
He took from Wilson and gave back again, his mouth locked to the other man’s, giving him everything, even the breath of his body as he cried out and shuddered at last with the swift river of heat that swept through him, bearing him up and up until he hung suspended for a single glorious instant, then poured himself out in an exquisite cascade of pleasure.  
  
Afterwards, he lay held tight in Wilson’s arms, trembling a little in the aftermath, but not from cold.  Never from cold.  This, he now knew, this heat, this warmth, the flames, the fire, were all of them aspects of his most essential nature, set free to be what it should always have been.  Deep inside, where the ice had frozen him, was the warm pool he had dreamed of, with Wilson forever at the center of it, welcoming him back into himself.  
  
Everything, everything was right now.  And somewhere, he could feel an angel smiling.  
  


 

 


End file.
